What does the Punisher do when there is no one left to punish? What happens when he loses his way? His calling?
In A Marvel Television Special Presentation: Punisher: One Last Kill, Jon Bernthal‘s Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal) finds himself at the end of a war he never thought would end. For a man built entirely around vengeance, peace can be its own kind of nightmare.
Directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green from a script co-written by Bernthal and Green, One Last Kill finds Frank drifting through a hellscape of his own making as his demons take the shape of loved ones. Meanwhile, the city has gone to hell in a handbasket as violence overtakes the streets and destroys anything and everything that resembles weakness.
One Last Kill is a massive act of violence and savagery that pulls Frank back from the shadows, as he must decide whether he is still a soldier fighting for justice or simply a ghost who doesn’t belong. And for action lovers, the whole bloody affair is glorious. Warning: All the spoilers for Punisher: One Last Kill ahead.
Where did we last leave Frank?
In the Season 1 finale of Daredevil: Born Again, Frank Castle was last seen escaping from Wilson Fisk’s secret “Red Hook” prison for vigilantes. After being captured by Fisk’s Anti-Vigilante Task Force (AVTF), Frank forced a guard to shake hands through his cage, breaking the man’s arm and taking his keys to escape into the night.
And where is Frank now?
Well, Frank isn’t doing too hot. He was never exactly the picture of mental stability, and after the murder of his family, much of it by the hands of the Gnucci crime family, Frank’s life at least had a purpose: Revenge, punishment, vengeance, and the kind of brutal justice only Frank Castle could deliver.
It seems that in his off time, Frank took down the Gnucci family one by one, leaving the city to descend into chaos due to a power vacuum. And while the city quickly destroys itself, Frank wastes away in his apartment, haunted by the ghosts of his friends and family — including fallen comrades such as Curtis (Jason R. Moore) and former allies like Karen (Deborah Ann Woll) — and the endless violence that has defined his life. As crime spirals through Little Sicily, Frank drifts through the streets, numb to the madness.
Courtesy of Marvel/Disney+
Haunted by visions and crushing guilt, Frank is close to taking his own life until Ma Gnucci (Judith Light) finds him. Just as mean and vicious as her butchered husband and sons, she places a bounty on his head, turning every desperate criminal in Little Sicily into a hunter. “A small bounty on your head is all it took. Every madman, crook, and killer in this neighborhood all worked for us, Frank. Any now they’re desperate,” she tells him. “I’m the one doing the punishing now.”
At 6:47, every greedy lunatic in the city is after Frank Castle, hammering down his door with a makeshift instrument of death. And what follows is an opera of violence so savage, relentless, and unapologetically brutal that one forgets this is even a Disney+ show.
How does One Last Kill end?
Turns out, a little bit of the old ultra-violence was exactly what the doctor ordered for good old Frank.
As killers swarm his apartment building, looking to cash in on the bounty placed on his head, Frank lays siege to protect the innocent families trapped inside. And in the middle of all the carnage, he remembers exactly who he is. Acting like the MacGyver of murder, Frank improvises brutal weapons on the fly and tears through anyone reckless enough to come after him.
His entire tenement becomes engulfed in violence and madness as every type of low-life predator in the city descends upon the building. Professional assassins, desperate street thugs, and ski-mask-wearing nobodies hoping for a payday flood the halls armed with anything they can carry. Frank responds accordingly. Armed first with instinct and then with whatever weapons he can strip from the dead, he defends the building floor by floor, killing dozens of would-be bounty hunters.
Frank eventually fights his way to the roof, picking off inexperienced and untrained attackers one by one as they charge him with axes, modified machine guns, pipes, machetes, and sheer desperation. After falling from the roof (don’t worry, he walks it off), Frank is faced with a choice: to seek revenge on Ma Gnucci, who is about to drive off, or to save deli worker Dre (Andre Royo) and his family. He chooses to be a hero. In the aftermath, Dre’s daughter Charli (Mila Jaymes) gives Frank a flower, which he later leaves on his daughter’s grave. Realizing his war was always about protecting the innocent, Frank embraces The Punisher once more and returns to the streets with renewed purpose.
Who does this tie into Spider-Man: Brand New Day?
While there is no direct story tie-in to the fourth installment of the Spidey franchise, Punisher: One Last Kill offers crucial insight into Frank Castle’s state of mind before audiences see him again. The film presents a version of Frank who is exhausted, directionless, and haunted by the question of what happens when there is no one left to punish. At its core, it is a brutal character study wrapped around a brutally, beautifully choreographed fight scene that feels less like a battle for survival and more like the final eruption of a man at war with himself.
But beneath the carnage lies a far more personal battle. Protecting Dre and his family allows Frank to rediscover the humanity he believed had died alongside his family. In the end, a simple flower left on his daughter’s grave becomes symbolic of something larger: The Punisher’s war was never truly about vengeance alone. It was about protecting those who cannot protect themselves. And for the first time in a long time, Frank Castle no longer feels like a man simply surviving his rage. He finds his calling again.
With that renewed sense of being and who he is, he enters Spider-Man: Brand New Day and the larger MCU with his signature code intact: Good guys live, bad guys die. If you’re guilty, you’re dead. That should go over well with Peter Parker.
A Marvel Television Special Presentation: Punisher: One Last Kill, Streaming now, Disney+
This story originally appeared on TV Insider
